Posted by atifateeq on Mar 18, 2013
Before the digital days when we were still cranking film into our cameras I remember going out equipped with a Leica or Rolliflex and looking for characters to shoot portraits of. I stopped doing that once I started shooting digitally. Not sure why, it just never felt the same. The introduction of high end prosumer digital cameras changed the landscape of street photography, I guess, in a way that didn’t sit well with me.
Asking to take someones photograph in the analog era was an engaging intimate experience, at least for me. I would connect with and learn about the people I was photographing. There was a mutual respect and people were genuinely enthused because they weren’t asked to be photographed very often. I would introduce myself and ask them if I could photograph them and more often then not they would reply with “Why?” or “What is it for?” a response that came from curiosity and not skepticism.
Now with a camera in everyones pocket and all of our moves being documented on Instagram and other social media platforms we have become desensitized to this kind of imagery. Most people dont care to question why they are being photographed.
I few days ago I decided to take a walk with my camera and take a few street portraits. I hadn’t done this in a while and was interested in seeing what kind of results I would get. I asked a few people if I could photograph them and all of them agreed. However no one really questioned or cared why I was photographing them they just wanted to know where they would end up or wanted to see what I had shot on the camera. Most were a variation of “Are you posting this on Instagram/blog/facebook?”. This is something I would never get asked in the pre digital era, and I liked not knowing what the photograph looked like, where it was going, or if it was even good. I liked that mystery and the sense of discovery when going through the negatives and finding a shot I remembered being really excited about taking. I also liked the connection I felt with people and the conversations I had, they weren’t clouded with a narcissistic desire to see how good your photo came out or what social media platform your images would end up on.
Anyway, I’m not really sure where I’m going with all this…here are two photos from that walk I took.
